explore the hidden world of
peeling an egg

360 participants each peeled an egg
scroll down & click on the actions to see, sort, filter the different stages in peeling

~no egg is equal~



Choose which images to explore:

Before peeling
Grasp
First tap
First shell
Peel
Last shell
Put down
After peeling
Shells



Videos:

Roll the egg
Squeeze the egg
All videos



Data visualizations:

Explore relations

Peeling an egg

It seems an obvious and easy task. We tap a few times or roll the egg, then we peel it with our thumb or fingers and we might even remove the membrane. Although ‘the best way to peel an egg’ is a hot topic, we don’t really think about it.

Liedewij van Eijk (1991) investigated the act of peeling an egg to learn how people peel eggs: What are the variations between people, what steps are taken during the peeling process and how do eggs behave while being peeled?

In 4 days, 360 participants were recorded while peeling a hard-boiled egg. Each participant was instructed to peel an egg like they would do at home, within the restrictions of a video frame. After the task, they were asked to fill in a questionnaire and the eggshells were documented. Van Eijk analysed all videos to collect as many process elements as she could find, together with their variations and time-codes to create a detailed insight in a hidden, subconscious world.

In addition, Van Eijk collaborated with Rob van Lier, Arno Koning, Sara Fabbri and Eline van Petersen from Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, and with Eline Van Geert from KU Leuven. In their collaboration, they analysed parts of the data to find various post hoc findings, investigated the aesthetic appearance of numerous egg peeling videos, and created a website with various visualizations and interactive sorting and filtering options.

Meet the Team

Liedewij van Eijk

Artist

Liedewij van Eijk (1991) is an artist and visual researcher who observes and investigates the hidden beauty and complexity in daily behaviour. In her work, the concept defines the medium. This ranges from photography, video, installation and performance, to large projects with hundreds of participants.

Rob van Lier

Investigator

Rob van Lier is a professor at the Radboud University and a principal investigator at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, where he is head of the Perception and Awareness research group.

Arno Koning

Investigator

Arno Koning is an assistant professor at the Donders Centre for Cognition at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He has an interest in visual object perception, attention, cross modal perception, as well as visual art and aesthetics.

Sara Fabbri

Investigator

Sara Fabbri is an assistant professor at the Department of Experimental Psychology of the University of Groningen. She investigates what happens in our brain when we see objects and when we manipulate them.

Eline van Petersen

Investigator

Eline Van Geert

Data & Image Visualizer

Eline Van Geert is a doctoral student at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at KU Leuven, under supervision of Prof. Johan Wagemans. Her research interests include visual aesthetics, perceptual organization, individual differences in perception, Bayesian statistics, and many more. She loves creating interactive data and image visualizations in html-css-javascript, R, and Python.

Credits

This website and the visualizations it contains are created by Eline Van Geert, the content it uses is property of Liedewij van Eijk.
The data collected by Liedewij van Eijk were recoded by Eline van Petersen.
The website as a whole and its contents are licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.
It uses the paid Missio template by elemis © All rights reserved.
The filtering and sorting of the images is done using Mixitup, which is used under a non-commercial CC-BY-ND license.